I don't know what it is about March. For some reason, I'm putting together posts on several subjects [usually these presentations have a theme, humorous points, and, ideally, a slick finish] this months. But, several forces are pounding on the door and, like the landlord [if your luck is bad] or the pizza delivery man [if your luck is good], they must be dealt with. Hand me my mace, Woman I Love. And don't wait up for me. This may take a while...
- Meagan was at church for Easter Sunday! Her parents were able to sign her out of the hospital for the day, and brought her to the main service. I'm no doctor, but she seems to be fairly responsive, and beginning her long recovery. It was a nice miracle, to go along with the bigger one we were commemorating.
- Thanks to Hulag [http://www.hulag.blogspot.com/] for adding me to his "Great Wall Of Reciprocal EntreCard Droppers". Check out his site for a clever presentation of 'Carders who, like myself, try to visit everyone who visits them. (I've considered adding a "U Drop/I Follow" badge, but I reserve the right to not respond, if I'm busy, say, or during the weekend [when I'm usually not on the computer]. I don't think it's fair to say you'll respond, unless you intend to as often as possible. That said, I am in favor of reciprocal drops, as long as the dropper at least looks at the site s/he is dropping on.
- As an interested observer [and a Blogger user], I find myself very concerned about an apparent new policy at "Big B"; namely, dropping blogs that are using non-Google ads. I'd have to be a lawyer to understand every word of the Blogger Rulebook, but I don't deny they have the right to do this. What I wonder about, though, is how long Blogger bloggers [they must be a more graceful way to put that, but I don't know how] are going to put up with it. With the exception of my EntreCard, I choose not to use any "monitization" features on my sites [and I have some doubts as to how much money is on the way to 'Carders; see my other blog: http://the-blog-log.blogspot.com/ , where I've written a three-part consideration of the soon-to-be-implemented EntreCard "purchase" policy]. But I do believe that every blogger has a right to operate his or her blog as they see fit. Host sites that will not acknowledge this right may find themselves deserted, or worse, populated entirely by old cranks like me [along with the infamous sites that include "wish lists". There's something about 13-or 14-year-old girls (and boys) posting sites that seem to be little more than "come-ons" for "Sugar Daddies" to make their wishes come true that just creeps my ass out, big time. I'd rather see them go than the commercial blogs]. If, on the other hand, Google [owner/operator of Blogger] is simply looking for a percentage of money made on their blogs from non-Google sources, I can understand that. After all, Google provides a free hosting service. If people are using the free service to make money, the site should receive some form of compensation. But I have yet to find any notification/warning/request for discussion from Google anywhere in the Blogger site. Blogger has what I think is an unfortunate reputation as unfriendly to money-making sites. This will not help. (Perhaps the ultimate answer would involve the creation of a separate tier of money-making blogs. A lot of bad feelings have been raised by the current "blog raids". But I don't believe it's too late to mend the rifts.) Google is, without question, powerful. Time will tell if they can also be reasonable with a group of blog creators who are, for the most part, small businesspeople.
-Mike Riley
PS: Happy belated Easter! [I'm not a complete crank this week. It just looks that way...]
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